Finished: Cryptonomicon

This book is quite the journey. The story is interesting for the first couple of hundred pages, but clearly that is where the editor gave up, as most of the remainder plods around taking a long time to get anywhere.

It is certainly cool that it essentially predicts crypto currencies (though as David points out, slightly absurd to back it with gold - something most major currencies have long since abandoned!). However, the books politics - essentially "if only nerds ran the world we'd all be OK" - are past their best. We now live in that world, and Bitcoin, FB and the rest have not saved us from authoritarian government, they practically ushered it in.

The book also betrays it's pre-gamer gate origins with its unapologetic gendered nonsense: nerds are men, women are for fucking, women can't get laser focused on subjects, men lack social grace. All of the women in this book serve as targets for men's affection. Despite one of the characters, America, being described as a badass by the book, she still craves protection from the male lead.

I'm sure this is not uncommon in sci fi of this era. However, I have no time for this nonsense any more.

Comments

Finished: Zendegi

It was good enough, but not one I would recommend. The books backdrop - a changing Iran - provided an interesting setting for the book. The two lead characters had lots of depth, and there were a couple of unexpectedly emotional bits that felt very real. Ironically, it was the technology - normally the most interesting aspect of Egan's books - that was lacking. The premise was "side loading" a specific humans behaviour into a template of a human brain. It was interesting to see this intermediate technology explored (i.e. on the way to, but not yet at, uploading human consciousness into a computer - a frequent occurrence in Egan's books). However, the story wanders around before simply stopping without really saying very much about it.

Now Starting: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Birthday present from Kim. I am slightly apprehensive about this - as it is a "classic" sci-fi, with all the baggage that that normally entails.

Now Starting: How Bad Are Bananas?

By By Mike Berners-Lee (who is in fact the brother of Tim Berners-Lee, best known for inventing the internet). I am a bit late in posting this (so back dating it), but I was very excited to start reading this (spoiler alert: it does not disappoint).

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